Pluserix & Immravax MMR vaccines (Urabe strain) quotes
Pluserix  (MMR)   MMR quotes

The two of the three vaccine brands that were introduced in 1988 had to be withdrawn for safety reasons and yet Dr Salisbury in his statement to the GMC sums up by saying this is a vaccine with an exemplary safety record.  Well, if that is his idea of an excellent safety record then we have a very different perception he and I of vaccine safety. [2010 April. Video] Dr Andrew Wakefield - In His own words question 1

.Dr Alistair Torres who was from the Scottish dept of health, and Dr Torres had been seconded onto the JCVI, effectively from Canada, and he had been brought in, at least in part, to advise on the introduction of MMR vaccine.  The experience in Canada was that they introduced a vaccine which contained a mumps component made up of a strain of the vaccine called Urabe, which was originally generated in Japan and they had run into problems with this vaccine.  It produced meningitis in children (1:43).  the mumps virus was identified in the brain of the children and the vaccine was pulled in Canada, it was pulled, it was stopped in 1987 (1:53), nonetheless this was the vaccine that was intended to be introduced into the UK a year later in 1988.
    They changed the name, but the vaccine was identical, so it had gone from Trivirix to Pluserix in the UK, an identical vaccine that had already been withdrawn for safety reasons, in Canada.
    Now Torres advised the JCVI not to introduce this vaccine because it was not safe.  He was overruled.  He said if you are going to introduce it then you should have active surveillance.  That is doctors or people going out and asking doctors--have you seen and cases of the following in the past month, not waiting for doctors to spontaneously report.  Spontaneous reporting picks up 1-2% of those adverse reactions.....It is totally inadequate but they were totally overruled, not active surveillance (3:02).   So they were going to intro a vaccine that has been withdrawn in other countries, known to be unsafe and they were going to have no active surveillance (3:08) for possible adverse events in this country.  Now this was done, he said, for competitive pricing reasons.  The strain of the vaccine that contained the dangerous mumps component was approx. 1/4 the price of the American MMRII made by Merck.  There had been no reports of meningitis using the Merck vaccine which contained a strain of mumps called Jeryl Lynn....So what we had was a cheaper vaccine that was known to be dangerous (3:47), so when the vaccines were licensed or the proposal to licence these vaccines, the JCVI or members of that committee (4:0) went to SmithKline Beecham (SKB) and said we want your vaccine.  SKB said we are not happy about it because this has already been withdrawn in Canada, it has got this mumps component in it which is dodgy
    They said if we are going to do it then we want an indemnity, we want indemnity from prosecution for damage to children on the basis (4:27) of the receipt of the vaccine, and it appears that indemnity was granted, and Torres told us about this (4:33), and he said at the meeting, the girl there from SKB said we are immunising the children and the government is immunising us.
    So the vaccine was produced, licensed, given, and cases of meningitis started to appear.  they were recorded and documented in the minutes of the JCVI which are now available on line and have been obtained by us as part of our investigation.  More and more cases began to be reported, the Scottish dept' withdrew this vax, certain health areas rejected the Urabe containing vaccine but still the JCVI continued with it.  There was no withdrawal of this vaccine until finally a study was grudgingly done in Nottingham where they found a much higher risk of meningitis with this vaccine (5:33) than had previously been predicted by passive surveillance, and the vaccine was withdrawn overnight, and it was only withdrawn overnight because it was leaked to the press.
    It appeared in a newspaper and suddenly the vaccine was pulled.  So a dangerous vaccine, a knowingly dangerous vaccine was introduced and ultimately proven to be dangerous and had to be withdrawn (6:00) in 1992.
    The two of the three vaccine brands that were introduced in 1988 had to be withdrawn for safety reasons and yet Dr Salisbury in his statement to the GMC sums up by saying this is a vaccine with an exemplary safety record.  Well, if that is his idea of an excellent safety record then we have a very different perception he and I of vaccine safety.  And so we come full circle now because it turns out the Dean was right.  Ari Zuckerman was right.  Based upon the information he got, he says (probably from Dr Salisbury way back when these parents started coming to us in 1996/7), that it was the government that was going to be sued.
    I thought it was going to be the drug companies, but it wasn't.  Why was it the government?  Because the government had given the drug companies an indemnity against harm and so this is why we are here, this is what this is all about (1:19), this is what this whole GMC affair and effort to descredit doctors questioning the safety of the MMR vaccine has come about because of an indemnity given to the drug companies all those years ago for the introduction of an unsafe vaccine by perhaps just a few members of the department of Health or recommended by the Dept of Health to the Government such that a vaccine (1:53) was introduced and when you ask now, and people have asked, was there an indemnity?  is there an indemnity?  the answer is catagorically, from David Salisbury, time and time again, there was no indemnity (2:07), no letter of comfort, nothing at all....and yet in the minutes of the JCVI, as late on in this story as 1997, there is an entry there that says (it talks about the various brands of vaccine that are available) SKB continued to sell the Urabe strain without liablity (2:39), there it is, in black and white in their own document.
    I have been every which way around that statement and cannot reconcile it to anything else other than that there was and remains an indemnity, so I am afraid (3:00) that this is really the origins of this whole process and the hope that my colleagues and I be discredited before this information ever becomes public, and in an effort to protect that original decision, that original flawed decision and the consequences that have flowed from it, then we find ourselves in this position, and that is fine but it is not going to stop the truth coming out, and you would think under those circumstances having withdrawn this vaccine (3:37) in Australia, Canada and Japan, and the UK that that would be it, they would get rid of it, because it is not safe, but no (3:46) they go on making it, and what do they do with it, they ship it out to the third world, and there was a mass vaccine campaign in Brazil in the 90's where they gave the great majority of Brazilian children a revaccination with MMR, during a very short space of time, with the Urabe containing vaccine, which they knew to be dangerous, which produced an epidemic of meningitis (4:16), a huge peak in the numbers of cases, and there was a paper written about it after, and one of the points in the discussion in the paper was perhaps it was not a good idea, in effect, to do mass vaccination campaigns because it produced the true incidence of side effects to a vaccine.
    Well, who wrote that, who in God's name wrote that?  So this is, if you like, the morality of the people we are dealing with.  Why is that vax even on the shelf?  Why is it being sold at cut rate price to third world countries?  What is the thinking behind this?  Because it is certainly not a moral imperative, it must be a commercial one.  So that's why we are here and that is why we will remain here, and continue to fight this (5:12)  kind of thing, because you can't treat people as expendable.  You can't damage them and put them to one side.  Adolph Hitler in Mein Kampf once wrote the greater truth excludes the lesser truth.  In the world or mind of people like Adolph Hitler and that kind of thinking failed in the 1940s and it is going to fail now.  You cannot treat people in a civilised society as expendable.
    Yes, there may be an argument for a vaccine programme that protects the greater good but that does not mean that you can render those who are damaged, just consign them to the dustcart because they are an inconvenience, or their (6:08) mere presence undermines public confidence, better to keep them hidden out the way and there are too many of these children now, they won't be hidden away, and parents are getting very very angry, and they have every right to be angry, and the truth is going to come out, and it is going to be a very very painful truth when it does come out.
    The tragedy is, it is going to damage public confidence in vaccine policy across the board because people are going to say we don't believe you any more, we don't trust you, you lied to us and when that happens all vaccination policy is compromised, the whole pillar of public health comes tumbling down and a lot of trouble is going to ensue as you are going to deal with a population who are not protected from these infections and we are going to run into big problems, and that responsibility for that lays at the door of the public health figures and their commercial partners who have allowed this to happen.  [2010 April. Video] Dr Andrew Wakefield - In His own words question 1

[Here is a denial classic (see).] I asked you for evidence that demonstrated that deaths were actually caused by the Urabe strain, and you have singularly failed to provide any evidence whatsoever. You have provided media reports, opinions of parents, and decisions of tribunals or courts. These are not evidence of causality that implicates the Urabe vaccine.  Nobody would disagree that deaths have been reported after MMR vaccines. But deaths after vaccination are very different from deaths caused by vaccination.
 Dr David Salisbury, director of immunisation, department of health, London 19.03.07 [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

The person who commissioned Deer was Paul Nuki, Sunday Times' sometime Head of Newsroom investigations and "Focus" editor. Paul Nuki is son of Professor George Nuki. Professor George Nuki in 1987 sat on the Committee on Safety of Medicines when the CSM was considering Glaxo company Smith Kline & French Laboratories' Pluserix MMR vaccine for safety approval. ......sitting on the CSM with Professor George Nuki was Professor Sir Roy Meadow and Professor Sir David Hull  [April 2008] MMR/AUTISM & THE TAMING OF THE BRITISH MEDIA--Clifford Miller

"Professor McDevitt,.....attended meetings that discussed warnings from other countries about an early form of the triple jab, using the Urabe strain of mumps virus, which caused encephalitis and meningitis. Despite warnings and the fact that this vaccine had already been withdrawn in Canada, the Urabe-containing jab was introduced in the UK in 1988. Some of the 12 children whose medical history featured in the controversial 1998 Lancet paper, drawn up by Dr Wakefield and his colleagues and which suggested a possible link between the jab and bowel disease and regressive autism, had received the Urabe-strain vaccine - as indeed had some of those children in the high court litigation with manufacturers." [June 2007 Private Eye] MMR Conflict of Interest Zone

FOIA Centre reply
  We referred him to the judgement, of March 13, 2003 of the Osaka district court in Japan, which ruled that the death of two children (among numerous other serious conditions) were caused by Urabe MMR.
  He said in response that Japan had a different Urabe MMR from the two Urabe MMR vaccines that were used in the UK.
  However, it remains that it was established in this case – to the satisfaction of a court in Japan – that the deaths of two children were caused by Urabe MMR.
  In addition, we referred him to several British cases where parents who claimed that their children had died as a result of Urabe MMR had received compensation under the “vaccine damage payment” scheme.
  He said in response that this does not establish that the deaths were in fact caused by the vaccine.
  However, in one case a tribunal ruled against a previous assertion by the department of health that the claim by a mother that her daughter’s death had been caused by Urabe MMR was unproven. Her claim was established at tribunal.
  A separate tribunal awarded compensation in relation to another case where a child died after suffering brain damage caused by Urabe MMR. And another tribunal was persuaded that Urabe MMR was the likely cause of death in a further case.
  Parents who have received compensation in such cases have indeed blamed MMR, including Urabe MMR, for causing the deaths of their children. Moreover, in some cases, their conclusions were endorsed by tribunals.
  There can be no doubt, therefore, that we were entirely correct to say that Urabe MMR was blamed for the deaths of several children. We did not say that Urabe MMR had caused such deaths, merely that it had been blamed for doing so. We do not accept that the conclusions of tribunals should be dismissed. [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

We are from America and my son received three MMR jabs, the second one being the triple vaccination you discussed (Urabe MMR). The doctor's office called me a few months after the second MMR and told me that kids were getting the mumps so come back and get another shot of MMR. My son then began to regress in a fog.
  MMR and the mercury in the other vaccines are causing brain injury (ie inflammation of the brain). The three viruses in MMR do not happen naturally at the same time of the year, and combining them is dangerous. The vaccine program in America is crumbling. After the three deaths from the HPV vaccine, I think that parents are getting smart.
  The British government statement, ‘The benefit out-weighs the risk,’ is something out of Nazi Germany.
  My 20-year-old son is 80% improved through therapy, anti-virals, dietary changes and nutritional supplements. I did not file with the vaccine injury compensation fund. The vaccine makers are pro-tected against lawsuits in America. There is a fund created to help those damaged by vaccines. To date, autism has not been deemed a reason to compensate parents. Next month, June 11, the first of 5,200 cases will be heard in front of a court.
  I filed for disability, and my son receives a cheque each month: I proved to the social security administration that he has mercury poisoning and viral inflammation of the brain from the MMR. At least they believed me with all his test results.
Elaine Dow, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, of Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning (ACHAMP) 26.05.07 [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

I write this on the exact 17th anniversary of my son's MMR vaccine on June 13, 1990. I have studied biochemistry and microbiology at University in the UK and have always known that my son's regression into autism occurred because of MMR.
  Had my son been as unwell on that Wednesday as he became three days later on the following Saturday he would never had had the vaccine because he was so unwell. After the MMR, he had a febrile convulsion, his head rapidly enlarged, he had a total loss of appetite, he screamed incessantly, became withdrawn and developed excessive salivation – all within ten days following the MMR.
  He then continued to regress into autism. Any mother would make the same association: the reactions of the baby were a direct result of the MMR vaccine. Mothers have instincts about their babies. It was formally recorded (on September 21, 1990) in his GP notes that I had serious concerns on the "rubella" vaccine. My son had only had the one rubella vaccine, namely MMR.
  I found out that it was the Urabe-containing MMR that had been withdrawn from Canada three weeks previous to his vaccination. Canada had withdrawn its licence, having previously suspended its use. But it took our health agencies a further two years to stop using Urabe MMR in the UK. Even then, it is debatable whether all condemned vaccine was removed from circulation given that there was a shortage of the “safer” Jeryl-Lynn mumps strain.
  My son received the Urabe vaccine because of where we lived: it was a postcode lottery. Our lives would change forever and nothing ever will bring back the child I lost on that day, 17 years ago today.
Eunice O'Connell, Liskeard, Cornwall 13.06.07 [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

I just wanted to say how impacted I was by your news article about this Urabe strain of MMR. One summer afternoon in 1992, my middle son, Toby, had a very sudden and alarming series of febrile convulsions.
  He was kept overnight for observation at Wycombe General Hospital, but has never had a convulsion before or since. This happened exactly 10 days after his MMR injection, but when I told the doctors this, they didn't want to know, and vigorously denied any connection (except for one nurse, who seemed interested).
  I think that it is appalling that the government knew of these risks and never made that information available. I suspect many more children have been affected than is admitted, though fortunately my son has not suffered long-term damage, although he alone of my three sons is prone to noticeably frequent headaches.
Fiona Maccabe, High Wycombe, Buckingham-shire 05.03.07 [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

 In January 1991, our son was given Urabe MMR. That same day, he displayed symptoms of both encephalitis and meningitis. He was left with serious brain damage and has since been diagnosed with severe autism and associated gut disorder.
  Due to this damage inflicted by the government, we have been given this life sentence to cope with, and left with a medically and mentally very ill teenager, of unpredictable behaviour and prone to violent outbursts. This is only exacerbated further by no appropriate treatment available to him, the removal of our legal aid by that same government, ensuring that such embarrassment remains undetected.
  It is for this reason that we, and so many others, are enormously thankful to you for uncovering what you have, in the interests of our damaged children.
Elaine & Andrew Butler, Dartford, Kent 05.03.07 [2007] Parliament was given false MMR assurance

However, previously secret government minutes reveal Professor McDevitt was himself a member of a 1988 government safety panel  which approved Pluserix MMR as safe for vaccine manufacturer Smith Kline & French Laboratories (see first .pdf attached). [May 2007] GMC Challenged On MMR Inquiry Chief's Vaccine Firm Links

"When notifications of meningitis (from MMR vaccine) from physicians were included; when the vaccine records of hospital cases of meningitis were included; when cross linkage of vaccine records from laboratory reports (4 laboratories) was performed and included the figure was increased to 1 in 11,000. It should be noted that in the case of one particular laboratory, this was 1 in 4,000. "----- Paul Shattock and Dawn Savery

"The Urabe strain, he writes, was replaced here in 1992 after it was "rarely" associated with "severe headaches".  Actually the Urabe strain was used in the MMR vaccines, Immravax and Pluserix, in this country between 1988 and 1992. Both were hastily withdrawn in 1992 after they were found to cause not "rare" but unusually high rates (more than I in 11,000) of potentially fatal aseptic mumps meningitis— er, a little more than a "severe headache", the Eye would suggest. And Watson should know because his company, then Merieux UK, manufactured the dodgy Immravax. Smith Kline Beecham produced the other.
    And here are two more important "facts" he left out. When those MMR vaccines were licensed here in 1988, an identical vaccine containing the Urabe strain produced by Smith Kline Beecham and called Trivirex had already been withdrawn from Canada because of suspected links to aseptic mumps meningitis. This no doubt would have passed unnoticed by our government scientists responsible for licensing because — as we now know courtesy of the BSE inquiry — the department was then a shambles. But it could not have passed unnoticed by MMR manufacturers.
    Yet as late as 1997 the Smith Kline Beecham Urabe MMR jab was used in a mass vaccination programme in Brazil and caused, yes, an outbreak of aseptic meningitis."---Private Eye

"Out of the 90 children on that list, 24 received a vaccine called Pluserix-MMR manufactured by SmithKline Beecham. It was withdrawn in the UK on the 14th September 1992 because of "reports of mild transient meningitis."    "Of the children that received Pluserix-MMR on that list, 3 died (1 after meningitis) , 4 had meningitis symptoms, 5 epilepsy, 5 had become autistic, 1 suffered from rheumatoid arthritis, 1 had severe urticaria and 2 had mumps. 6 had their speech affected - forgetting language skills they had acquired, 1 went deaf. 6 from this time suffered from delayed development and 4 were very very disturbed. One of the deaths was from the Guillain-Barré syndrome - where antibodies are produced that attack the body's own cells . 7 or more suffered frequent fits or convulsions, 1 had terrible screaming fits.  Thirteen of the children on that list received Immravax made by the French company, Merieux UK Ltd. This was also withdrawn on the same date and for the same reason as Pluserix-MMR - because of "reports of mild transient meningitis.".   Of the children that received Immravax; 6 became epileptic, 1 nearly died from encephalitis, 3 had meningitis, 1 measles and 1 mumps, 5 had speech and communication problems, 3 became slow developers, 7 had frequent fits and convulsions, 2 went into the kind of terrible screaming fits that are associated with brain trauma."---Jani Roberts http://www.gn.apc.org/inquirer/jabs.html

Withdrawn 2-3 years after proven unsafe:
"I believe the documents clearly reveal how the central government hid undesirable data and delayed discontinuation of the (MMR) vaccine," lawyer Tatsuro Shigemura said."--Media 2002

"In 1990, scientists from the Queen’s Medical Centre Nottingham found some children developed a form of meningitis after receiving it. But despite this the Government went on using it for more than two years.  The Canadian Government, also using the vaccine, immediately switched to a safer version. It was not until September 1992 that the UK Department of Health issued pharmacists with emergency supplies of a safer brand with instructions to withdraw existing batches."--Sunday Express

Still in use 7 years later, 1997, in Brazil:
OUTBREAK OF ASEPTIC MENINGITIS ASSOCIATED WITH MASS VACCINATION WITH A URABE CONTAINING MMR VACCINE

Still in use 12 yrs later,  2002:
"Officers are also investigating how a consignment of potentially dangerous mumps vaccine was sent to one of Direct Health 2000's suppliers. The vaccine sent by a German distributor turned out to be of the Urabe strain, banned in Britain since 1992 as it can cause viral meningitis in babies. "--Media 2002